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Cloudy skies and rain showers on the final two days couldn’t stop the University of Michigan’s solar car team from winning the 2016 American Solar Challenge race last Saturday for the sixth consecutive time.

With the lack of sun to keep the solar panels charged, all 24 teams crept towards the finish line, and the U of M’s team was the only solar car to finish the race under its own battery power.

All of the other entrants were loaded onto trailers and were pulled across the finish line.

“We were worried about physically getting to the finish,” said team leader Shihaab Punia.

“Out of all the teams, we were the only ones that went [the] entire race on solar power alone.”

The lack of sun wasn’t the only challenge the young students faced.

The team had a pre-race six-minute penalty on each of the eight day, 1,975-mile race.

That’s because the car, Atrium, (the Latin word for gold) was designed to compete in last fall’s Australian World Solar challenge and didn’t quite meet the American race regulations.